Survival Hunter Raid Guide
Last Updated:September 9, 2024|Change Log|FAQ
Welcome to the Survival Hunter Raid guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.0! This guide covers everything you need to know to understand your character! Are you starting out and leveling up from 70? Check out the leveling guide!
Overview
Hero Talents
- Sentinel performs significantly better than Pack Leader and is your primary hero talent tree choice.
The Sentinel hero talent tree does not introduce any major changes in your rotation.
- Its benefits come mostly from Sentinel which makes your attacks have a chance to apply stacks to your target, up to a maximum of 10. Various hero tree talents give a chance to activate or remove these stacks to deal damage to the targets and generate Focus.
- Symphonic Arsenal provides an increased damage in stacked AoE situations every time you use Butchery on targets affected by Sentinel.
- Lunar Storm is your hero talent capstone that makes your Wildfire Bomb spawn a circle at your main target's location that damages the target and enemies around it every 15 seconds.
- Defensively, Sentinel offers Don't Look Back giving you an absorb shield up to 10% max HP.
The Pack Leader hero talent tree mostly empowers Kill Command, Raptor Strike and your pet's Basic Attack.
Various hero tree talents complement and synergize with each other to make your:
- Kill Command have a chance to reset its cooldown with Frenzied Tear and do more damage.
- Raptor Strike cost no Focus, do more damage and make your pet cast a Basic Attack with Pack Coordination and Furious Assault.
- Pack Assault is your hero talent capstone that doubles the stacks of Vicious Hunt and the effect of Pack Coordination, on top of making their effect always active during Coordinated Assault.
Defensively, Pack Leader offers Den Recovery which applies a heal over time effect when you use Aspect of the Turtle or Survival of the Fittest with extra duration if used below 50% HP.
Talents
Gameplay Altering Talents
Discover all talents that significantly alter your gameplay within the Spec and Class Talent trees. This section gives a concise overview of these talents and their applications but for a more detailed look check out the Rotation and Deep Dive sections below.
Spec Tree
- Tip of the Spear
- One of your major talents to play around and buff the correct spells.
- Grenade Juggler + Wildfire Infusion + Lunge
- This talent combo provides many sources of Wildfire Bomb cooldown reduction.
- Mongoose Bite + Bloody Claws
- Improved version of Raptor Strike giving a stacking buff that increases its damage and chances to reset Kill Command cooldown.
- Flanking Strike
- Heavy hitting ability that benefits more from Tip of the Spear and generates 2 stacks of Tip of the Spear.
- Spearhead + Deadly Duo
- Your small burst cooldown, increasing your critical strike chance and critical strike damage.
- Also applies an additional bleed for Outland Venom value.
- Coordinated Assault
- Your main burst cooldown, combined with Relentless Primal Ferocity gives an additional stack of Tip of the Spear when you Kill Command.
- Bombardier
- Changes how you play your Coordinated Assault window. It incentivizes you to dump your stacks of Wildfire Bomb before entering Coordinated Assault and weaving in Explosive Shot when the effect ends.
Class Tree
- Padded Armor
- Combine with Lone Survivor to give Survival of the Fittest an additional charge and reduce its cooldown, significantly increasing your survivability.
- Natural Mending
- Provides cooldown reduction to Exhilaration, improving your self-healing.
- Posthaste
- With this talent, Disengage can now remove all movement impairing effects and give a burst of movement speed for 4 seconds.
- Implosive Trap
- A trap that will knock-up enemies within a short radius around where you place it.
Hero Talents
- Sideline
- Your default pick since Catch Out can cause some issues with its root.
- Eyes Closed
- Outperforms Sentinel Watch with the 2 minute Coordinated Assault build and keeps it synchronized with most on-use trinkets.
- Overwatch
- Performs similar to Crescent Steel.
- Crescent Steel can pull ahead in fights like Rasha'nan where the boss spends more time under 20% health compared to normal fights.
- Performs similar to Crescent Steel.
When to use this Spec
Use this spec if you're fighting 3 or more enemies for an extended period of the fight.
Talent Adjustments
Listing all the changes within the Class and Spec tree compared to the default build.
Spec Tree
- Added
- Merciless Blows + Contagious Reagents
- Are your best way to spread Serpent Sting and get more value out of Outland Venom.
- Butchery + Frenzy Strikes
- Is an additional way to provide Wildfire Bomb cooldown reduction in AoE situations.
- Exposed Flank
- Makes your Flanking Strike hit two additional targets and make your Kill Command also hit two additional targets for 10 seconds making Bloodseeker easier to hit multiple targets.
- Improved Wildfire Bomb
- Merciless Blows + Contagious Reagents
- Removed
- Spearhead
- Deadly Duo
- Mongoose Bite
- Bloody Claws
- Killer Companion
Rotation
Tier Set
- 2-Set: Wildfire Bomb damage increased by 5%
- 4-Set: Raptor Strike deals 10% increased damage to targets affected by Wildfire Bomb.
Single-Target
Opener
- The general goal of the Survival Hunter rotation is to avoid overcapping your Focus, not waste valuable cooldown on abilities such as Wildfire Bomb and Kill Command and maximizing the value of Tip of the Spear to buff your most powerful abilities detailed in the Priority List.
- Use Hunter's Mark before the fight.
- Use your active trinkets, Tempered Potion and racials like Blood Fury or Berserking after using Coordinated Assault.
Priority List
This is a general priority you aim to maintain throughout the fight.
- Avoid capping Wildfire Bomb charges.
- Cast Coordinated Assault with 0 Wildfire Bomb charges when playing with Bombardier.
- When playing Symbiotic Adrenaline use any remaining Tip of the Spear stacks before entering Coordinated Assault.
- Cast Kill Command in Coordinated Assault with Relentless Primal Ferocity when you have 0 Tip of the Spear stacks.
- Cast Spearhead.
- Spend Tip of the Spear stacks with the following priority:
- Flanking Strike
- Wildfire Bomb if you're about to reach 2 stacks.
- Kill Shot
- Explosive Shot
- Cast Kill Command while below 70 Focus and
- Inside of Coordinated Assault with Relentless Primal Ferocity not above 1 stack of Tip of the Spear.
- Outside of Coordinated Assault not above 2 stacks of Tip of the Spear.
- Cast Wildfire Bomb to spend Tip of the Spear.
- Cast Raptor Strike.
AoE
Opener
- Similar to Single-Target, your goal stays the same but with an emphasis on resetting more Wildfire Bomb with Butchery. Below, you can see an example of how your opener looks like in AoE situations.
- Buff heavy-hitting AoE abilities like Wildfire Bomb and Explosive Shot with Tip of the Spear.
- Spread Bloodseeker by always using Kill Command on a new enemy that doesn't have the debuff.
- Use your active trinkets, Tempered Potion and racials like Blood Fury or Berserking after using Coordinated Assault.
Priority List
- Avoid capping Wildfire Bomb charges.
- Cast Coordinated Assault with 0 Wildfire Bomb charges when playing with Bombardier.
- When playing Symbiotic Adrenaline use any remaining Tip of the Spear stacks before entering Coordinated Assault.
- Cast Kill Command in Coordinated Assault with Relentless Primal Ferocity when you have 0 Tip of the Spear stacks.
- Spend Tip of the Spear stacks with the following priority:
- Flanking Strike if talented.
- Wildfire Bomb if you're about to reach 2 stacks.
- Kill Shot
- Explosive Shot
- Cast Kill Command while below 70 Focus and
- Inside of Coordinated Assault with Relentless Primal Ferocity not above 1 stack of Tip of the Spear.
- Outside of Coordinated Assault not above 2 stacks of Tip of the Spear.
- Cast Wildfire Bomb to spend Tip of the Spear.
- Cast Raptor Strike with the Merciless Blows buff.
- Cast Butchery.
- Cast Kill Shot on a target below 20% HP.
- Cast Raptor Strike preferably on a target without Serpent Sting.
Deep Dive
Tip of the Spear
- Your main goal in single target and AoE is to buff as many Wildfire Bombs, Flanking Strikes and Explosive Shots (+Kill Shot in Single-Target) with the Tip of the Spear buff.
- You may sometimes find yourself getting an excess of Tip of the Spear stacks, especially during Coordinated Assault with Relentless Primal Ferocity talented. Make sure you use these on:
- Raptor Strike on Single-Target.
- Raptor Strike with Merciless Blows and Butchery on AoE.
- Currently, there is an unintended interaction with you being able to consume only one stack of Tip of the Spear to buff two spells. The two main applications are:
- Wildfire Bombs and Raptor Strike/Butchery
- With enough haste (~20%) you have to throw your Wildfire Bombs outside of melee range but close enough to run to your target and Raptor Strike when your global cooldown is ready again. It can also be done with a max range Harpoon.
- Fury of the Eagle and Wildfire Bomb/Raptor Strike
- Since Fury of the Eagle consumes its Tip of the Spear stack at the end of the channel, you can clip it with Wildfire Bomb or Raptor Strike and get the benefit of both abilities being buffed by one stack of Tip of the Spear.
- Wildfire Bombs and Raptor Strike/Butchery
Min-maxing Bombardier
- With the above information about Tip of the Spear, you want to use every free Explosive Shot that you get at the end of Coordinated Assault with the buff.
- Your aim is to weave some big Focus spenders between your Kill Command + Explosive Shot combos to not cap the resource resulting in a damage loss.
Below, you find an example of how to play your ability sequence after exiting Coordinated Assault. The example is assuming you exit your cooldown without any stacks of Tip of the Spear. Ideally you try to exit your cooldown with at least two stacks of Tip of the Spear.
Harpoon with Terms of Engagement
- Harpoon becomes a new source of Focus generation but comes with a drawback. Harpoon can only be casted starting at 8 yards away from the target.
- The spell is not affected by global cooldown so your main goal is to use it between two rotational spells.
- The two best moments for you to move away from the target and use Harpoon are when you're about to use either Wildfire Bomb or Kill Command next since they both don't require you to be in melee range.
Nerub-ar Palace
The following tips are mainly applicable to Heroic Bosses. Mythic tips are released after our progression concludes.
← Scroll for more Bosses →
Offensive Cooldown Usage
Boss Tips
- You can clear Stalker's Netting without being stunned with Aspect of the Turtle if you need space, especially in between the boss and the area where you will play Carnivorous Contest.
- Use Disengage, Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Eagle when you soak Carnivorous Contest to minimize uptime loss while not being in melee range of the boss.
Offensive Cooldown Usage
- If your raid lacks damage on the adds, you can always opt to switch for the AoE build and hold cooldowns for when you take Gruesome Disgorge.
If you're assigned to Group 1:
If you're assigned to group 2:
Boss Tips
- You can immune Goresplatter with Aspect of the Turtle allowing you to keep uptime on the boss when other classes would have to run out.
- Use Survival of the Fittest when taking Gruesome Disgorge.
- Use Exhilaration after Crimson Rain.
Offensive Cooldown Usage
Boss Tips
- Use Exhilaration when targeted by Phase Blades.
- Use Survival of the Fittest to cover the Cosmic Shards debuff after hitting many Cosmic Simulacrum with Decimate.
- When targeted by Phase Blades, use Aspect of the Eagle to keep uptime on the boss while you position yourself.
Offensive Cooldown Usage
Boss Tips
- Use Aspect of the Eagle when targeted by Spinneret's Strands or Rolling Acid to keep uptime on the boss while you position yourself.
- Use Survival of the Fittest or Aspect of the Turtle mainly when targeted by Spinneret's Strands or Rolling Acid.
- Since Rasha'nan is in the air, Wildfire Bombs used on him will only hit the boss. You can use the Wildfire Bomb mouseover macro and hover an add if they're close enough to the boss to cleave both the add and the boss for more damage.
Offensive Cooldown Usage
Boss Tips
- At the start of the fight, use Aspect of the Eagle or Aspect of the Cheetah to keep up with the boss while he moves to the side of the room.
- When targeted by Experimental Dosage, use Aspect of the Eagle to keep uptime if you have to break an egg outside of melee range.
- Pre-throw a Tar Trap on a Blood Parasite egg that you will destroy to slow them down.
- Use Binding Shot when the Blood Parasite egg gets destroyed to keep them together.
- Using the Wildfire Bomb mouseover macro can be beneficial in situations where you have adds between you and Broodtwister Ovi'nax but still want to mainly output damage to the boss.
- Use Muzzle to interrupt Poison Burst.
- Use your defensives mainly for Ingest Black Blood and Experimental Dosage.
- If you ever get Unstable Web (which is very unlikely), you can Disengage to dispel yourself but be sure to not have anyone around you when you do.
Offensive Cooldown Usage
Boss Tips
- When targeted by Assassination or Twilight Massacre, use Aspect of the Eagle to to minimize uptime loss while not being in melee range of the boss.
- Your defensives usage is primarily on Assassination and Twilight Massacre.
- Getting multiple stacks of Queensbane can also be deadly.
Offensive Cooldown Usage
Boss Tips
- In Phase 1, use your defensives on Venomous Rain as its the only heavy hitting damaging ability in the phase.
- In Phase 2 and 3 you will mainly use your defensives on Web Vortex, Stinging Swarm and Unleashed Swarm.
- You can use Intimidation or Binding Shot if you see one of the Scarabs from Call of the Swarm almost reach the target it fixates or when they get gripped together. Be aware that at 100 energy the Scarabs gain Scarab Lord's Perseverance making any crowd control useless.
Stat Priority
Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance during Raid boss fights as a Survival Hunter. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.
Higher Item level items are better in most scenarios. For an accurate representation of what item to equip you should use Simcraft! A static "Stat Priority" is just a starting point and can easily shift depending on your individual gear.
- All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!
Tertiary
- Avoidance - Great stat to reduce the damage intake of "Area of Effect" abilities.
- Leech - Provides additional healing through damage dealing. The damage of your pets does not heal you thus Leech is a great tertiary for you since most of your damage is coming from your own spells.
- Speed - Niche tertiary that can be very useful and has been proven useful in the past. Makes playing certain mechanics a lot easier.
Gear
Slot | Item | Location |
---|---|---|
Head | Lightless Scavenger's Skull | Tier / Catalyst |
Neck | Trailspinner Pendant | Mists of Tirna Scithe |
Shoulder | Lightless Scavenger's Taxidermy | Tier / Catalyst |
Cloak | Consecrated Cloak | Crafting |
Chest | Goresplattered Membrane | The Bloodbound Horror |
Wrist | Lightless Scavenger's Wristguards | Catalyst |
Gloves | Lightless Scavenger's Mitts | Tier / Catalyst |
Belt | Clasp of Waning Shadow | Mists of Tirna Scithe |
Legs | Lightless Scavenger's Stalkings | Tier / Catalyst |
Boots | Sure-Foot Sabatons | Siege of Boralus |
Ring 1 | Seal of the Poisoned Pact | Queen Ansurek |
Ring 2 | Writhing Ringworm | Broodtwister Ovi'nax |
Trinket 1 | Skardyn's Grace | Grim Batol |
Trinket 2 | Void Reaper's Contract | Nexus-Princess Ky'veza |
Weapon | Charged Halberd | Crafting |
Below you are presented with a good list of farmable alternatives that are obtainable outside of WoW’s weekly lockout system. While replaced in time as you progress, these offer immediate character power.
Slot | Item | Location |
---|---|---|
Head | Rattling Deadeye Hood | The Necrotic Wake |
Neck | Trailspinner Pendant | Mists of Tirna Scithe |
Shoulder | Courier's Dragonriding Spaulders | Grim Batol |
Cloak | Troggstitched Drape | Grim Batol |
Chest | Coagulum Cuirass | City of Threads |
Wrist | Penumbral Rimeguards | City of Threads |
Gloves | Corpseleecher Grips | The Stonevault |
Belt | Cinch of Lingering Influence | City of Threads |
Legs | Entwined Chimeric Legguards | City of Threads |
Boots | Striders of Restless Malice | The Necrotic Wake |
Ring 1 | Band of the Roving Scalawag | Siege of Boralus |
Ring 2 | Devout Zealot's Ring | The Dawnbreaker |
Trinket 1 | Skardyn's Grace | Grim Batol |
Trinket 2 | Ara-Kara Sacbrood | Ara-Kara, City of Echoes |
Weapon | Harvester's Interdiction | Ara-Kara, City of Echoes |
Trinkets
Below you can find active and passive alternatives to our recommended trinkets. Do note that some trinkets are better than others depending on the raid boss.
Active Trinket alternatives
- Treacherous Transmitter
Passive Trinket alternatives
- Ara-Kara Sacbrood
- Dead-Eye Spyglass
- Empowering Crystal of Anub'ikkaj
- Ovi'nax's Mercurial Egg
Embellishments
Our theoretical Best In Slot setup includes a mix of Dawnthread Lining and Duskthread Lining crafted on Bracers and Cloak with Harvester's Interdiction. However getting a Harvester's Interdiction from The Great Vault especially early in the season is pretty unrealistic making you lean more towards a weapon craft unlocking weapon specific embellishments and being only ~0.6% less damage than the unrealistic 639 Great Vault weapon setup.
- Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension
- Grants one of the four secondary stats every time you get a stack, changing the secondary stat every time you get a new stack. Keeps cycling even at full stacks.
- Takes 120 seconds to fully stack.
- Writhing Armor Banding
- Increases the power of your Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension.
or
- 2x Dawnthread Lining / Duskthread Lining
- Grants Critical Strike / Versatility above 80% Max HP.
- Only craft if you have a 639 weapon and even then it's still recommended to sim if this setup pulls ahead of the weapon embellishment craft.
- The preferred crafting slots are Cloak and Bracers.
- In some scenarios Duskthread Lining pulls ahead if you already have enough Critical Strike.
Remaining Sparks
- Crafted items are 636 item level and regular items are 636 on max item level, therefore, it's not beneficial to equip crafted items outside of your 2x embellishments unless you don't have access to other high item level gear on that slot.
Simcraft
To find the best combination of gear available to you or identify the best possible upgrades, visit our Simcraft guide to learn how to utilize Simcraft easily and effectively.
Consumables
- Phials
- Flask of Alchemical Chaos -- maximum DPS.
- Flask of Tempered Versatility -- less DPS but more survivability.
- Food
- Feast of the Divine Day
- Combat Potion
- Tempered Potion
- Health Potion
- Algari Healing Potion -- a big burst of healing
- Weapon Oil
- Ironclaw Whetstone
- Ironclaw Weightstone
- Augment Rune
- Crystallized Augment Rune
- Sockets
- Deadly Onyx
- Culminating Blasphemite -- Unique, use one of each gem color to enhance your Culminating Blasphemite.
- Masterful Ruby
- Masterful Sapphire
- Masterful Emerald
Enchantments
Head | Nerubian Gemweaver |
Neck | Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
Cloak | Enchant Cloak - Chant of Winged Grace |
Chest | Enchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance |
Wrist | Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Avoidance Nerubian Gemweaver |
Waist | Nerubian Gemweaver |
Legs | Stormbound Armor Kit |
Boots | Enchant Boots - Scout's March |
Ring 1 | Enchant Ring - Radiant Mastery Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
Ring 2 | Enchant Ring - Radiant Mastery Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
Weapon | Enchant Weapon - Authority of the Depths |
You buy Nerubian Gemweaver from the Great Vault Vendor to add sockets to your Helm, Wrists & Waist.
Races
For min-maxing a Survival Hunter in raiding, different racial traits can provide a tremendous benefit to your character. If this is not your top goal, picking a race that fits your style works just as well.
- Stoneform -- Dwarf
- Dispels Magic and Bleed debuffs. Has been useful in the past on some bosses with Bleeds.
- Rocket Jump -- Goblin
- Do a small jump in the direction your character is facing.
- Berserking -- Troll
- Strong DPS racial but lines up poorly with Coordinated Assault.
- Reduce the duration of movement-impairing effects by 20%. This was only useful once in the recent history of progression raiding but is still worth noting.
- Blood Fury -- Orc
- Strong racial for damage because of both Command and Blood Fury which lines up with Coordinated Assault.
- 20% reduced stun duration on you which can be useful in some situations.
- Spatial Rift -- Void Elf
- Spawn a shadow traveling into your facing direction, and activate it again to teleport to it.
- Maximum range of 100 yards.
Recommendation
In general, it's safe to say that if you care about min-maxing your DPS, you should go with the highest DPS racial. That being said, the story is a bit different if it's about progression raiding. Some help out massively to speed up the progression on certain bosses. Notably, Dwarf with their Stoneform helped out on Tindral Sageswift and Fyrakk the Blazing in the latest Race to World First by having easy access to dispelling yourself at crucial points of the fights mentioned.
Macros
Discover recommended macros for Survival Hunters during Raid encounters and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.
Cursor Macros
Freezing Trap -- Casts Freezing Trap on your cursor without confirmation.
#showtooltip Freezing Trap
/cast [@cursor] Freezing Trap
Tar Trap -- Casts Tar Trap on your cursor without confirmation.
#showtooltip Tar Trap
/cast [@cursor] Tar Trap
Binding Shot -- Casts Binding Shot on your cursor without confirmation.
#showtooltip Binding Shot
/cast [@cursor] Binding Shot
High Explosive Trap -- Casts Freezing Trap on your cursor without confirmation.
#showtooltip High Explosive Trap
/cast [@cursor] High Explosive Trap
Implosive Trap -- Casts Implosive Trap on your cursor without confirmation.
#showtooltip Implosive Trap
/cast [@cursor] Implosive Trap
Mouseover Macros
Pet Macros
Utility Macros
Addons
Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Survival Hunter, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Raids to make your life easier.
Addons
WeakAuras
Changes this Patch
Patch 11.0.2
Patch 11.0
FAQ
Q: What is the Best Pet For Survival?
Credits
Written By: Soda
Reviewed By: Solwinas